Reviews written by David Walter Hall

Jazz is a study of madness, perhaps. And no other artist in the music’s history has mapped the geometry of anguish and madness so eloquently as Thelonious Monk. It is Monk’s own personal madness that is the main subject of Misterioso, a cabaret show of music, projections and monologues adapted and translated by the singer Filomena Campus from a series of poetic works by Stefano Benni.

Monk spent the final seven years of his life, until his death in 1982, in near total silence, not speaking or playing a note to anyone. Misterioso explores the possible causes of his descent, through a series of monologues in the guises of his friends and contemporaries, through Monk’s own words (recorded by singer Cleveland Watkiss), and through the biggest clue of all: Monk’s music, which is performed by an all-star band of London musicians.

Byron Wallen leads the group. Wallen is fast becoming one of the most respected trumpeters on the scene, and it is easy to see why. The ease and force of his playing, and his natural affinity with Monk’s compositions, shine light straight from the heart of the music. He embraces the theatricality of the setting, indulging in Monk’s weirdnesses and eccentricities, playing to the crowd.

Benni’s text points the finger at the indignities Monk and other jazz musicians suffered at the hands of McCarthyism as a key cause of his descent into silence, and Campus uses this as a jumping off point for a wider exploration of McCarthyism, employing text by Allen Ginsberg, and a powerful monologue in the character of Billie Holiday. Frustratingly, Holiday does not sing (though Campus does, beautifully), and her connection to Monk’s story is tenuous and a tad confusing, making perhaps too general a point. More sharp are the speeches by Pannonica Rothschild, Monk’s friend and eventual landlady, played with class and sass by Tamsin Shasha, which give us a fragmented, jigsawed picture of Monk’s highs and lows.

Though the production is at times confusing, it seems only to mirror the confusion which we can only imagine existed in Monk’s mind. The narrative is scattered, many sources and media are used, and the argument (if it is indeed that) that McCarthyism led to Monk’s evident mental illness is unconvincing and never forcibly made. One hour in, and people are dancing in the aisles, but by the end, all is subdued, and Pat Thomas (masquerading as Monk throughout) plays a lonely and bittersweet Introspection on piano, having brought us several profound steps closer to the uncomfortable, dark silence within, and having made just an intangible little bit of sense out of Monk’s madness.

An am-dram production in a church hall, this show comes from another world entirely to even the worst of fringe shows: a world where a serviceable witch’s hat can be made from a cone of black paper and stick-on glitter; where people stand in horizontal lines, over-acting, pacing and delivering dialogue to the back of the hall; where smoke machines hiss and Mrs. Simpson from the WI plays the oboe: Stephen Berkoff this ain’t.

Initially, it’s all rather quaint. The company’s enthusiasm and blissful ignorance of the rudiments of theatre (accidentally) conjure a Wodehousian idyll of tea with the vicar, dotty housewives and cake stalls. A soldier enters, wearing a plastic helmet and a home-made tabard covering jeans and t-shirt, and the thought occurs: are they taking the piss? Is this an inspired send-up of all things am-dram? An inner voice, like the itchy fibres of a noose around your neck, drones, “no, no, no…” This is tragically sincere.

The story is adapted from Terry Pratchett’s novel, and a few of his better lines have made it into the script, giving a few chuckles for some. But the adaptation leaves the story almost incomprehensible. Scene follows scene, new characters appear, an endless stream of performers litter the painfully drab stage, nothing amounts to anything.

The venue is a good mile from the centre of town. The play is billed as 90 minutes but drags on for 2 painful hours, adding insult to injury. Do not waste your money on this appalling play.

At the age of 18, Allegra Levy is already a considerably more compelling performer than handfuls of Parky regulars. She sings a straight-ahead set of standards, smiling and scatting all the way. She is astonishingly confident, both in her person and in her mastery of the music and words.

Her band, all of them under 25, are all students or graduates of the New England Conservatory in Boston. Altoist Mark Zaleski manages to fit in a great deal of jokerish personality among his honed Bird and Cannonball licks. Some might be disappointed to hear such a young band playing in such a well-trodden style, but if standards are your thing, these guys are right on their game and play with enough edge to make you remember them.

There is perhaps no real heartache to be heard in Levy’s voice. She seems a happy girl with loving stable parents, and it would be churlish to expect her to have lived the blues like the teenage Billie Holiday. Yet on a song like I’m a Fool to Want You, she shows she is not afraid to confront the meaning of the words. She will attack a line like “to share a kiss the devil has known” with a brave inquisitiveness, casting herself among the darkness.

The set ended with Too Close For Comfort, which culminated in a joyous kind of jump-jive, the snare banging 2 and 4 in celebration, and ending on the famous Basie 3-note sign-off, capping off an evening of sheer satisfaction.

Songs For a New World is a perennially popular Fringe favourite, a revue of cabaret numbers by Jason Robert Brown loosely themed around the American experience. It feels that the company here have picked it off the shelf, hoping for a cheap and easy ticket to Edinburgh. There is plenty of effort; they are trying very hard; but it is an uncomfortable school-play of a show, empty vocals interpolated with painful attempts at harmony.

Though the singing is weak, the acting is bad, and not for a moment could anyone come to believe in the reality of the characters, played by the cast of five young actors. Indeed it’s hard to tell who or what they were supposed to be. On the song Steam Train, about a basketball prodigy, some humour is made of the actor’s lack of skill, co-ordination, physicality or charisma; it is a poor apology for falling so far short of what performance demands.

The four-piece band are competent, but are kept offstage, which is a poor decision considering that almost no effort has been made with the set, costumes, lighting or choreography, leaving very little to look at. The microphones clicked and buzzed in and out of function, and sound levels fluctuated clumsily throughout, though this may have been a temporary glitch.

All in all, I’d give this one a miss.

“I fell in love with somebody completely by accident, just by sitting beside them,” is a great way to introduce a song. Andi Neate is an artist who is very obviously sincere in everything she does. She is a confessional singer-songwriter, singing songs about her life and dreams with three chords and an acoustic guitar.

She is accompanied by a tight, competent band of piano, double bass, drums and a female backing vocalist. The Jazz Bar’s grand piano lends a richness to the band’s sound that most groups of this sort have to make do without, and with Neate’s muscularly feminine cornet-like voice, the aural effect is juicy, bordering on lush. On the upcoming gigs she promises string sections, trumpets and some new a capella songs.

There are jazzy hints in the arrangements, with some playful piano, brushed drums and one track with a shuffle rhythm recalling Van Morrison’s Moondance or early Norah Jones. Mostly the music is in a familiar, soft rocking style.

The world of course is full of confessional singer-songwriters, and there is nothing new to be found in Neate’s music. Nevertheless, she is an engaging performer, and a lovely person, heart and soul: worth checking out, especially should you tire of the arch and arty, and find yourself after something a little earthier.

The duo of Ian Millar on tenor and soprano saxes and Dominic Spencer on (electric) piano play a standards-based set at the Radisson Hotel every lunchtime (though, 12:30 is breakfast time for most fringe-goers surely?). In the darkened cellar bar, the music is accompanied by projections of Scottish landscapes, which they have filmed themselves.

Ian Millar is a saxophonist with a light tone in the cool-school mould of Mulligan, Getz and Desmond, and a gift for melodic improvisations that emerge organically from the written material. On soprano his microtonal inflections are particularly controlled and expressive, rendering In a Sentimental Mood, a highlight, affectingly dry and unsentimental. His two original compositions in the set are sophisticated pastoral affairs reminiscent of Andy Sheppard, and fit in neatly among the Monk, Rollins, Ellington and Porter standards.

Dominic Spencer however, without the support of a bass player, remains tethered by the left hand to an unadventurous lounge piano style; background jazz basically, which is a real shame considering the quality of his partner. The lack of a real piano doesn’t help either.

The projections don’t add much, and there is no attempt at any synthesis between them and the music. This is far from a Scottish suite or a multimedia artwork; as a concept it is in fact strikingly glib: nice music and nice pictures.

I had fishcakes with hand-cut chips and mayo, which were damn-near perfect, and maybe deserve their own entry in the Fringe programme. Also on offer are fresh soup, toasted sandwiches and pasta, and there’s a well-stocked bar. I expect a lot of people will come here for the food and the atmosphere, and on these at least, Jazz at Lunchtime cannot be faulted.

Based on Conrad's novel, “The Secret Agent“, transplanting its protagonist to modern-day Soho, attaching the story to a real alleged bomb plot on the London Eye, incorporating some classic jazz recordings, and with some liberal polemics in there for good measure, Secret Agents is faultless in its ambition.

Three actors play multiple characters in a semi-improvisational, sketch style.  Verloc is a bearded, porn-shop owning, jazz loving, agent provocateur.  There is a potentially interesting conceit from the beginning, that the story is made up of half-truths and hearsay.  The effect though is to shield the actors from having to commit to the reality of their situation, and the drama is reduced to anecdote.

Someone here obviously loves jazz, at least nostalgically, and Verloc is no pseud.  But the connection between musical and political anarchy remains superficial and unexplored. Verloc says trite things about jazz, about freedom and timing, which mean nothing substantial, either to the character or the story.  There is little in the way of characterisation or indeed acting, comedy accents standing in for characters.  But the laughs are few, and the occasional hints of emotion seem only like the fading ghost of the novel glimmering through.

For all the promise of its concept, the play never takes off.  And it's too long.  It might have been trimmed down to a tighter, more meaningful 45 minutes, but as it is it drags on, a rambling, uncertain, second-rate retelling of a grander story.